Michael West and the doctor who donated the skin cells to make
the embryos were on the Today show this morning. The doctor
was crippled in a biking accident, so I think the empathy card
was played well. I thought Dr. West could have done better when
he was asked which diseases could be treated with stem cells.
He should have had a long list that he can rapidly recite from
memory.
Here is a CNN report:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/11/26/human.cloning/index.html
Of note:
> Last summer, the House of Representatives voted
> to ban human cloning and set penalties of up to
> 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine for those
> convicted of attempting to clone humans.
>
> The measure was never taken up by the Senate,
> so it never became law.
>
> Over the weekend, several lawmakers said
> West's announcement could prompt the Senate to
> take up the legislation.
So we may not be out of the woods for this session yet.
I'll add from a technical standpoint -- using skin punch biopsies
(the method ACT used) as a source for the transplanted cells
*is* likely to produce poor results. Those cells (even fibroblasts
or epidermal stem cells) are pretty differentiated. You really want
circulating stem cells or intestinal crypt (stem-like) cells which
are presumably less differentiated and more likely to be revertable
to totipotency.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:22 MDT